I came up with a cool idea earlier today, with the help of a friend or two around the proverbial water cooler. Not a tv movie or a film. A video game.

Have the video game start by showing the events in the alley at the very end of the series finale, then the game picks up right before Angel says "Let's get to work," and makes that first punch. You get to choose between being Angel, Spike, DeadFred, or Gunn. The scenario is the alley. The bad guys start at a trickle pace but just keep coming, and you're getting occasional sniper shots from the dragon above. The game proceeds to get harder the longer you stay alive, until the baddies come so fast the slightest mistake means game over. Each round isn't supposed to last more than ten minutes, and you ARE going to die the first several times you play. There are ways to survive longer than ten minutes, but if you do survive it's still 'game over' cuz the Senior Partners don't want you to win. The House Always Wins.

Playing Ilyria would be the equivalent of 'easy' level, or perhaps tutorial. She's more powerful than the others, not susceptible to things like getting staked, but she can be killed by anything as powerful as Hamilton, like the big bosses (i.e. Senior Partners). Playing Spike would be a little tougher. Say 'medium' level. It'd also be the funniest of the four. Playing Angel would be 'hard' and if you play Gunn, you start the game with your life force meter slowly diminishing even when you're not taking damage, and because you're just human you should really avoid taking any damage. Even at full strength, two or three hits from any baddie and it's game over. Your job is to find out how to make those last ten minutes count, using whatever is in the alley, and also figuring out how to make the baddies fight amongst themselves. The equivalent of 'nightmare' level but with a twist. Play your cards right and you get turned. You're Gunn the vampire now, and at that point, you can fight the other three.

You know, I was thinking that a video game would be a cool way to continue the 'verse also. Characters like Spike, Angel and Illyria are great for video games because they're very strong, fast and hard to kill. Perfect for taking on the hordes of enemies games tend to throw at you. Also a video game can bring you the big battles that no TV budget would allow. Most important thing for me though, would be that Joss (or even one of the other writers at the very least) wrote, co-wrote or supervised the script. The storyline and writing for the first 2 Buffy games was pretty weak.

I thought the stories were pretty good for both games were pretty good, the second was probably better, because it didn't mess with future story lines like the second, I didn't like the idea of the First having his own dimension, I thought the whole point was that this is the First's dimension as evil is all around us, why would the First have his own dimesion, that and the whole idea of it choosing Ethan Rayne as it's vessel were a bits silly, I never thought Ethan was that evil. That said, I'd rather the games had been written by the writers (as Alias was) rather than the authors of the novels.

Both were good games though, and I was dissapointed a third one wasn't unveiled at E3 the other week.

I'd like an Angel game, one that starts at the end of "Not Fade Away" but that you can win, and the rest of the game you're being hunted as you try and find your way to the Senior Partners, you could have the surviving characters (I'm thinking Angel, Spike, and Illyria) playable, as they all take three different routes, while mostly the same type of gameplay as the Buffy games, the idea of being hunted would be able to add an element of stealth to the game. The idea posted earlier, about fighting a battle you could never win, though it would be good at first, I'm thinking I'd get fed-up, and end-up throwing controllers and stuff (the fact my N64 controller still works is proof it's a well built controller! the fact that my XBox and GameCube controllers still work is that games are getting easier).

I enjoyed both games too. I liked the playability of the first game better but I thought the plot of the second game was better. I'm also hoping for a third game too and I'd love the idea of an Angel game that picks up where the series ended, but I'd only like that if it was written by Joss himself because then we'd have an idea what season six could've been like. That would be a great game, one that is based on Joss's own plans for the season that didn't happen. It would also be great if it had levels that you had to play as the different characters like Buffy 2 had. One of the tasks could be get Gunn to the hospital before he dies or the games over. They could also have a gimmick where Illyria has to find the device that Wesley used to take some of her power from her to keep her from exploding and she needs to find it so she can be more powerful to defeat another demon of equal strength. This could be a timed level and the gimmick would be she has to take out the other demon before she implodes. There are tons of possibilities for an Angel game.

In a recent interview (dig through the archives), Joss said he was developing it again. Before that, we just knew what Nicholas Brendon said at, what was it, SlayerCon.

So yes, the series is back in development, but that doesn't mean we'll ever get to see it. Only a short presentation has been produced, no real episodes, yet, and also, a network would have to pick up the series.

I was thinking after the ending we saw, maybe what we didn't see went something like this:
As Angel and co. charge at the enemies, a magical barrier separates the two groups, and as Angel looks up its Willow, next Buffy, Giles, Dawn, Xander, Willow, Andrew, Faith, Wood, and an army of slayers step in to offer a little assistance. Buffy and Angel briefly converse, and they rush the bad guys. After a victory, this Shanshu business gets settled, and Angel says something about going after the senior partners next.
Now wouldn't that have a been a cooler ending? I mean the ending of "not fade away" was good, but not as satisfying as I hoped it would be. Who knows, maybe what happened after the finale will be resolved in a movie, or comic of some sort.